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Saturday, 7 December 2013

Why are we fascinated with celebrity deaths?

Paul Walker

This week, Hollywood and fans around the world mourned the
death of actor Paul Walker. On Twitter,
amid the outpourings of emotion and condolence messages, one stood out. “Am I
the only person who didn’t know who Paul Walker was? #willwatchhisfilmsnow.”

It’s strange how our curiosity about famous people often
peaks after their death. Websites unearth a plethora of hitherto unknown and
largely inane details about their life. We click on ‘last interview’, ‘last
film’, ‘last photo’. The final photo of Paul Walker was taken just as he was
about to jump in to the doomed Porsche minutes before he died in the fiery
crash. We study it, share it and are drawn to glance at it again. It’s as though
by looking at that grainy image we’re searching for traces of death’s coming -
of a reaper standing in the shadows.

Over recent weeks, we’ve been bombarded with repeated images
of gunfire blowing out JFK’s brain. Again and again the vision rolls,
ostensibly in the context of the 50th anniversary of his death and
new revelations about who pulled the trigger. But underneath it lurks a
fascination, which few seem willing to voice. We so rarely bear witness to the
moments just before death. The re-mastered video footage reveals the shocking juxtaposition
of a man in his prime on a glorious sunny day slumping in death moments later.It’s as revolting as it is riveting. It’s not
the gruesomeness of that moment that draws us, but watching the thread that separates
life and death snap before our eyes.

As humans, we are acutely aware of our own mortality, but
through fear or self-consciousness or denial, few of us talk about it outside
the spectre of illness or mass tragedy. Viewing death through the prism of
celebrity allows us to validate our curiosity about it. We watch their films.
We devour their music, writing and art. We’re not so much honouring their death,
but trying to uncover the meaning of their life and perhaps, the meaning of
ours. And we do it in droves.

Lou Reed toiled in the music industry for 50 years, famously
not achieving significant commercial success. But the week after his death in
October, his album sales skyrocketed by 607%.

It’s possible that the media exposure of his death
stimulated interest in his work, but maybe there is something else at play here,
given how often it occurs. Editors have long packaged death upfront “If it
bleeds, it leads”. At the time of
Whitney Houston’s death, the majority of the public dismissed her as a good
girl turned train wreck. But that week, she became the first person in 50 years
(and the first ever woman) to have three top 10 albums in the Billboard chart.

Similarly, Michael Jackson hadn’t produced an album in the
eight years leading up to his death (the last being 2001’s relative flop, Invincible). He was living as a virtual
recluse, mocked and derided. But in the three weeks after he took his last
breath, 2.3 million albums were sold.What
did we hear when we listened to those tracks that we were unable to fathom while
he, the most talented performer of a generation, was alive? If life imitates
art, perhaps art explains death. The tortured psyche of Heath Ledger’s Joker in
his last film, The Dark Knight
carries an eerie reflection of the stories we heard of him holed up in that
hotel room on his own, suffering severe insomnia and confused about his medication.

Paul Walker’s car crash was all the more surreal because he was famous
for his recurring lead role in the Fast and the Furious franchise. His words
about dying smiling in a fast car haunt us and we wonder if on some level he
had an awareness of his fate. James Dean offered a throwaway line to camera in a 1950s interview, warning about the dangers of speeding. “Take it easy driving
– the life you save might be mine,” he said, winking. He died when his car was
unable to avoid a speeding, oncoming vehicle.

Maybe it’s through art, culture and celebrity that we feel
liberated to express our curiosity about death, which manifests in increased clicks
and sales, revealing something deeper about our inability to otherwise engage
with it. Filming for the next instalment
in the Fast and the Furious franchise
has been halted indefinitely in the wake of Walker’s death. If the film is ever
released, I’m tipping it will outperform all others in the series by a mile.
Not necessarily because it will be the best, but because in watching a young man
on screen who is no longer with us, we’ll be searching for answers about our
own existence in the darkness of the movie theatre.